152 THE WORLD MACHINE 



the Dark Ages were not so very dark, the fanatics of the Church 

 hardly so maniacal as the earlier historians would have led us 

 to believe. Doubtless there were some exaggerations, many 

 inaccuracies. Gregory the Great may not have burned the 

 Palatine library. In the monasteries some faint traces of 

 ancient learning survived. A closer scrutiny will no doubt 

 reveal some relief in the heavy lines of the now classical picture, 

 drawn in the pages of Ranke, Draper, Llorente, Taine, and 

 many another. 



But in general the attempt to rehabilitate what we term the 

 Middle Ages resembles very much that sort of exaggerated 

 reaction which proclaims the virtues of a Nero and the humanity 

 of the misprised Tiberius. Let us not lose sight of the main 

 facts. Freedom of thought was stifled. Natural inquiry was 

 dead. The arts of civilisation all but perished. Sanitation, and 

 with it civic decency, almost disappeared. The Paris of the 

 twelfth century was a pig-sty. This was generally true of 

 Europe, outside of the Arabian dominion, through eight or ten 

 centuries. 



Great libraries were a characteristic of ancient civilisation as 

 they are of modern ; one might almost call them an index. In 

 the long Blight they were sacked, burned, and dispersed. At 

 the close of the Ptolemaic dynasty it is estimated that the 

 Alexandrian Library contained a total of 700,000 papyri. In 

 the fourteenth century, when Charles V., surnamed The Wise, 

 founded the Royal Library of France, he could amass 900 

 volumes. He was a patron of learning, and so highly did he 

 prize his collection that he had a catalogue made of it. So 

 drear was the time that the fact has descended in its annals. 



The great collection of Alexandria was but typical of the 

 age. It was begun by Ptolemy Philadelphus, successor of 

 Ptolemy Soter, half-brother of Alexander the Great, who took 

 for his portion the dominion of Egypt when the Macedonian fell. 

 It was originally a part of the museum or university. The 

 collection numbered 400,000 volumes when it was burned by 

 Csesar. A second library established by Ptolemy Physcon in 

 the great temple of Serapis, containing 300,000 volumes, escaped. 

 To atone for the loss of the first, Mark Antony presented to 

 Cleopatra the rival library which had been collected by Eumenes, 

 King of Pergamus. The latter consisted of 200,000 volumes. 



What was true of the gay capital of the Greeks was almost 



